Recently, a thin and lightweight LCD is often used as the display of a personal computer or the monitor screen of a mobile telecommunications device. However, conventional TN (twisted nematic) mode and STN (super twisted nematic) mode LCDs allow only a narrow viewing angle. To overcome that problem, various techniques have been researched and developed so far.
A multi-domain type LCD with a vertical alignment liquid crystal layer is known as one of those LCDs with improved viewing angle characteristics. Such LCDs are usually called “VA (vertical alignment) mode LCDs”. Patent Document No. 1 discloses an MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment) mode LCD, which is one of those various VA mode LCDs. In the MVA mode LCD, an orientation control structure for controlling the orientation of liquid crystal molecules is provided for each of the two substrates that face each other with a liquid crystal layer interposed between them. Specifically, the orientation control structure may be either a projection made of a dielectric material or a slit that has been cut through an electrode. With such an orientation control structure such as a projection or a slit, when a voltage is applied to the liquid crystal layer, a number of regions in which liquid crystal molecules tilt in mutually different directions (which are usually called “liquid crystal domains”) are produced, thus lightening the azimuth angle dependence of the display characteristic and improving the viewing angle characteristic.
As described above, a VA mode LCD will contribute to getting a quality display operation done with a wide viewing angle. Recently, however, more and more attention has been paid to the fact that the γ characteristic will vary according to the viewing angle (i.e., whether the viewer is viewing the screen straight or obliquely). In other words, a lot of people are now aware that the γ characteristic has viewing angle dependence. The γ characteristic is the grayscale dependence of a display luminance. That is why if the γ characteristic in a front viewing direction is different from the one in an oblique viewing direction, then the grayscale will be displayed differently according to the viewing direction. Consequently, the viewer may sometimes find the image on the screen unnatural depending on the viewing direction.
Thus, to overcome such a problem, Patent Document No. 2 discloses a technique for arranging an opaque layer in a predetermined region within each pixel. That opaque layer selectively shields some of the multiple liquid crystal domains that will produce such an unnatural image from the light when the viewer is viewing obliquely, thereby minimizing such unnaturalness on the screen.    Patent Document No. 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 11-242225    Patent Document No. 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-93846